COLUMBIA, S.C. — Donald Trump took the stage here Friday night, surrounded by some of the nation’s most well-known Black conservatives, with a message: He can secure a historic share of the Black vote for Republicans.
"In 2020, we increased our share of the Black vote by 50%,” Trump said during his keynote address to the Black Conservative Federation. “The polling is coming out and they say ‘Wait a minute, there must be a mistake here. Black people really like Trump. There must be a mistake.’”
He added that he believes Democrats "have done a very poor job" for Black Americans, who, he said, related to him because they understand he's been "discriminated against" in the legal system.
Trump was on stage with officials including Reps. Wesley Hunt of Texas and Byron Donalds of Florida, as well as Ben Carson, who led the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term in office.
The Black Conservative Federation event was held one day before the Republican primary in South Carolina, a state whose population is one-quarter Black.
And it comes against the backdrop of a collection of groups closely aligned with Donald Trump’s campaign preparing to launch an effort to land Republicans a historic chunk of the Black vote in the 2024 elections.
“We have coalition groups across the country that are set to roll out initiatives very, very soon in those communities, that will focus on voter outreach and engagement and things like messaging in Black communities,” said Darrell Scott, a Black Ohio-based pastor who is a Trump adviser and helping lead the effort.
“We have people that are soldiers,” added Scott, who said he has directly spoken with the former president about the plan. “We are building a network across the country, and we will have an impact.”
Scott said the goal is to bring together conservative groups that already have footholds in Black neighborhoods in politically important states, with the specific goal of counterprogramming what he called “negative messages” about Trump.
“It is going to focus on direct voter engagement, and messaging to specific communities,” Scott said. “It is my intent to counter the negativity from Never Trumpers. We are going to dispel narratives that exist about him.”
Since entering the political fray, Trump has embraced and amplified baseless conspiracies that Barack Obama, the first Black president, was not born in the United States; in 2020, he falsely claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was not eligible for that office because her parents were migrants.
More recently, Trump has used dehumanizing language when describing Black prosecutors involved in his series of legal woes, including using the phrase a “George Soros backed animal” when describing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is Black and led the investigation into the alleged cover-up of “hush-money” payments Trump paid an adult film star ahead of the 2016 election. Trump has also used the term “rabid” to describe Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis, who led an investigation into whether Trump attempted to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, and he falsely said she had had a relationship with a gang member.
Jasmine Harris, the Biden campaign's Black media director, called Trump an “anti-Black tyrant” ahead of the Black Conservative Federation gala.
“The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” she said. “This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park Five, questioned George Floyd's humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black workers spiked during his presidency.”
“Donald Trump has been showing Black Americans his true colors for years: An incompetent, anti-Black tyrant who holds us to such low regard that he publicly dined with white nationalists a week after declaring his 2024 candidacy," she added.
The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment on this statement.
Scott’s position in Trump’s orbit has expanded over the years, and he has become one of the president’s closest advisers on issues related to Black voters. NBC News reported last week that Scott recently spoke to Trump and warned him that his relationship with conservative activist Charlie Kirk could hurt him with Black voters. Kirk in recent months has criticized Martin Luther King Jr. and expressed skepticism about the qualifications of Black pilots.
“We just need some conservatism to shut up with their racism. You have guys like Charlie Kirk attacking MLK and that other stuff,” Scott told NBC News last weekend. “President Trump’s detractors are trying to attribute those thoughts, ideas and sentiments to him. He honors Martin Luther King, and we don’t need anyone appearing to not in his [Trump’s] proximity.”
“Pushing back on some of that is also part of our goal,” he added.
Last week, Scott called Kirk, who leads the influential conservative organization Turning Point USA, “racist.” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the group, said Kirk was taking fire because his organization fought to oust Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. He said that they will “brace for” Kirk and the group to take hits “as a parting shot from the old guard at the RNC.”
Scott said the efforts will not get fully underway until Trump is the presumptive nominee, but the work of stitching together a national coalition of groups that will serve as boots on the ground — the names of which he was not yet ready to share publicly — has begun.
"Republicans are starting to warm up to Donald Trump because he has done outreach to Black Americans,” said Marcel Dixon, a former Black Republican congressional candidate who is working with Scott in South Carolina. “One of the messages needs to be, ‘Why are people spending billions on illegal immigration, and what have Black Americans gotten after 60 years of voting for Democrats?”
The groups will craft messages aimed at Black voters around issues like immigration, opposition to foreign wars and the economy under President Joe Biden.
“One of the main things that we want to talk about is the fact that people vote with their pocketbooks,” Scott said. “Everyone’s pockets are out of pocket when you look at the price of food, gas, interest rates and inflation.”
Despite being dogged by claims of open racism from his critics since entering politics, the 12% of the Black vote Trump won in 2020 was the highest percentage a Republican president has received in recent decades, and most recent public polling suggests he can exceed that number in 2024.
Scott said that if their efforts are a success, he thinks Trump could secure more than 20% of the Black vote, which would be a historic number for a Republican nominee. Recent public polling suggests the number could be attainable. Trump got the support of 16% of Black voters in 2023 NBC News polling, a number that jumped to 28% with Black voters under 34 years old.
Some evidence of the bump in public polling Trump is getting with Black voters was evident last week in South Carolina ahead of the state’s Republican primary, a contest Trump is dominating in most public polling.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a top Trump surrogate and rumored potential vice presidential pick, blasted comments from Biden that framed current congressional Republicans as racists.
“The president of the United States considers all Republicans racist,” Scott said unprompted Thursday after voting early at a Charleston-area polling place. “So to see the kind of comments that came out of the President is just remarkable, disappointing as a citizen.”
“I thought he [Trump] was the worst person until I did my own research,” said Alyiah Abdallah, a Black Democrat-turned-Republican at a campaign event for South Carolina statehouse candidate Latrecia Pond, a Black Republican. “You have to learn how to trust no one’s information but your own. I was stuck in my own world of cognitive dissonance.”
During the event, Abdallah spoke of her former support of Black Lives Matter and the fact that she voted for former President Barack Obama but is now working to help elect Trump.
“Donald J. Trump is anything but wicked,” she told the crowd. “I stand for pro-life, for a closed border and for truth in knowing the difference between a man and a woman.”
Pond is running for the South Carolina statehouse in the same Democratic-leaning seat she lost in 2022 with 43% of the vote. She says she has seen a noticeable shift in the attitude of Black voters in South Carolina over the past two decades.
“I have been here since Bush. I have been in communities reaching out to my people,” she said. “And now I am seeing more Blacks actually coming to the party. I am on the ground seeing Blacks gravitating toward the Republican Party and Trump.”
Biden’s Democratic allies blame the shift in public polling, in part, on what they say is not enough media attention on Biden’s accomplishments and growing concerns over disinformation.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a longtime Biden confidant who helped him win over Black voters in the state in 2020, said that among his biggest concerns as the general election approaches is the continued spread of disinformation, including the use of artificial intelligence.
“Everyone knows what happened in 2016 and 2020, and now we see what happened in New Hampshire. This stuff is misinformation and disinformation targeting African American voters, that is what concerns me,” he said. “We need to do something to overcome that. To sit here and just recognize that it is happening is stupid.”
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella is investigating recordings sent to multiple voters ahead of that state’s primary using AI to mimic Biden’s voice and encourage Democrats voters not to vote. There is no evidence that that robocall, in particular, targeted Black voters.
Clyburn expressed concerns to NBC News before the Feb. 3 South Carolina Democratic primary that Black voters, especially younger ones, were not coming around to Biden like they did in 2020 when Clyburn’s endorsement helped Biden win South Carolina and reverse the fortunes of what had been a fledgling campaign.
“We are going to have to engage an army of volunteers in these communities, we can’t rely on traditional ways of doing things,” Clyburn told NBC News in a Tuesday interview. “We have got to engage in hand-to-hand combat, and it is clear to me the other side is setting up another set of circumstances that allow them to deny the results [of the 2024 election].”
Clyburn said he believes Biden’s agenda will resonate across voting groups and demographics, specifically noting the president has so far forgiven nearly $140 billion in student loan payments, secured a historic change that allowed his administration to negotiate Medicare prices with the intent of driving down drug costs, capped the cost of insulin at $35-per-month and made significant investments to combat climate change.
During his party’s primary in South Carolina, which has one of the largest black populations in the country, conservative efforts began to start stripping Black support away from Biden.
NBC News reported Tuesday that a conservative group launched an experimental stealth campaign funding ahead of the Democratic primary in South Carolina, sending 75,000 mail pieces to voters seen as likely to vote in the Democratic primary, which has a heavily Black electorate. The effort, which was funded by anonymous donors, focused on the Biden administration’s push to ban menthol cigarettes, which Black smokers are more likely to use, according to research cited by the FDA.
“Leadership is about setting priorities. Instead of banning menthol cigarettes, President Biden should: Stop the flow of illegal drugs in our country; make groceries more affordable; make college more affordable,” read the mail piece.